Although the instruments that would eventually evolve to become the guitars we know today can trace their route back thousands of years, usually to central Asia, what we know as the classical guitar today wouldn’t be born until the European Renaissance period, originating out of Spain sometime in the late 16^th century.

Renaissance Period Guitars

Renaissance guitars, although looking similar to what we know as a guitar today, actually had eight strings, rather than six.  These eight strings were made up of four pairs, which were known as courses.

The guitars used throughout the Renaissance period bore similarities to a Spanish instrument called the vihuela, which again closely resembled what would become the classical guitar.  One major difference was that the vihuela has six courses – twelve strings – as opposed to four.

Evolving Classical Guitars

Spanish music theorist and mathematician Juan Bermudo presented a treatise on stringed instruments in the mid-16^th century, which would go onto influence the appearance and sound of both the vihuela and standard Renaissance guitar.

Eventually, both models would become five course instruments, each course being A, D, G, B, and E, which to this day remain five of the strings on a standard guitar.  This would become the most commonly seen instrument throughout the 17^th century, and by the 18^th century various musicians were phasing out courses and instead using single strings to get the sound they wanted.  This would eventually lead to the birth of the six-string guitar as we know it today, which would be the standard design come the middle of the 18^th century.

These new guitars were much smaller than the instruments we are used to today, originally staying true to the smaller styles seen with flamenco guitars.  One final innovator and idea would turn them into the instruments we now call guitars.

Antonio de Torres

This Spaniard is widely credited as being the inventor of the modern guitar, his designs being the inspiration behind the hundreds of acoustic guitar variations that we see used by musicians and in music stores today.

The modern classical guitar is also known as the Spanish guitar, owing to its origins both in current form as well as going back to the Middle Ages and Renaissance when they’d first become popular.

Moving Forward

Later in the 18^th century, various manufacturers would begin producing acoustic guitars, and by the end of the century the Gibson Guitar Corporation, albeit with a different name and mission at that time, would be formed.

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Today, many recognize the bass guitar, usually called simply ‘the bass,’ as one of the leading musical instruments in the world, well known for inspiring various musicians and genres of music.  How did the bass guitar come to be the popular instrument it is today?

Early Days of the Bass

While we can trace the origins of the double bass back to early string instruments from the 15^th century, the bass guitar as we know it today didn’t come into being until the 1930s.

Paul Tutmarc, a musician from Seattle, was the first to present an electronic bass in current form.  He was inspired to create the instrument so that he could create a bass line from a guitar shaped instrument, rather than exclusively from the double bass.  Despite continuing to innovate with bass guitar variations up to the end of the 1940s, these early editions were never a success.

Enter Leo Fender

By the 1950s, Gibson were already dominating the overall guitar market, and while Leo Fender was producing his own electric guitars to rival Gibson’s, he was able to steal a march with the electric bass.  The 1951 Fender Precision lent several of the features from the Fender Telecaster, and quickly became the industry standard for bass guitars.

Musicians would gradually start picking up the electric bass towards the end of the decade, with Bill Black, touring with Elvis Presley’s band, being one of the more notable to do so.

While Fender and Gibson continued to lead the way, companies from around the world were soon producing their own electric bass models.

The Explosion of Rock and Roll

As The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and dozens of other bands hit the exploding 1960s music scene, so instrument production skyrocketed, too.

Fender introduced the Jazz Bass in 1960, and later the Mustang Bass.  Although the latter would become the favoured instrument of several top musicians, including the Stones’ Bill Wyman, Gibson would begin to claw back some of Fender’s market dominance, in part due to their fame in producing standard electric guitars.

1970s and Later Years

While the 1950s and 60s set the tone for what the bass would bring to music, from the 1970s onward musicians and instrument designers would begin to experiment with different ideas and innovations.

One of the first would be Alembic, who would produce custom-built instruments and set what is still today’s standard for ‘boutique’ guitars.  Different varieties of bass would also start to become associated with various music genres, allowing progressive bands of the time such as Rush to create a more definitive, unique sound.

Five-string basses also started to be produced in the 70s, although these wouldn’t become widely available at consumer-friendly prices until the 90s, when six, seven, and even eight string variants would be pioneered.

Other customisations, such as the headless bass, would become popular in the 80s, but are rarely seen today due to their status as gimmick or novelty instruments.

Despite these later innovations, the Fender Precision and Jazz bass guitars remain the most popular instruments to this day.

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The Gibson Guitar Corporation was originally founded in 1902, with the aim to produce high quality mandolin family instruments.  Gibson built a global reputation over the next 30-years, becoming associated with quality musical instruments including acoustic guitars.

Growing Gibson

Gibson’s true prowess didn’t become known, however, until the mid-1930s, when they pioneered their first electronic pickup with musician Alvino Rey and engineers from Chicago-based Lyon & Healy.  Gibson’s own Walter Fuller would produce the final designs for their first pickup, and Gibson’s first commercially produced guitar, the ES-150 (ES for Electric Spanish, 150 for the $150 cost), shipped in May 1936.

The ES-150s Popularity

At the time of launch, musicians around the world were calling the ES-150 the best guitar ever produced.  However, it was a model not without its problems, the biggest of which was the uneven sound that was produced across all six strings.  This was the first guitar to come with an amplifier as standard, too, and helped to establish Gibson as the leaders in the market that they remain to this day.

Even now, after almost 80 years of additional innovation and research, people still consider the original ES-150 pickup to be the finest ever produced.

Post War Innovation

While the Second World War hit Gibson, not to mention businesses across the world, hard, they would quickly pick up where they had left off almost a decade earlier.

The first big post war innovation from Gibson was the P-90 pickup, launched in 1946, which was designed to give a more powerful sound and allow musicians to be more flexible with how they played.  These were quickly followed by the ES-5 guitar (no, it didn’t cost $5), which was the first to have three pickups, the standard today, and the ES-175.

Gibson’s Golden Years

The only problem Gibson faced during these years was that they were continually setting the bar higher for themselves in terms of what they could achieve with an instrument.

In 1952, they would release the Gibson Les Paul, designed and developed with Les Paul himself, a legendary musician who many consider to be the godfather of modern guitar.  This would spawn a number of designs and become a whole range, and was the first guitar to feature the tune-o-matic bridge, pioneered by then Gibson President Ted McCarty, which is still the standard on all Gibson guitars today.  An endorsement from the world’s leading guitarist at the time did wonders for Gibson’s fortunes, and built on the popularity and success of the early Gibson electrics to further strengthen their brand and market position.

McCarty’s Innovations and Departure

McCarty would leave Gibson in 1966 following a takeover that for some time saw the future of the company subject to much doubt, but before then he would give Gibson the products and legacy that we see today.

Throughout the late 1950s and early part of the 1960s, McCarty would lead Gibson as they produced legendary models like the Flying V and the Firebird, which remain among the world’s most popular instruments to this day.

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Today, the electric guitar is one of the most iconic symbols associated with the music industry.  If a young musician wants to learn guitar, increasing numbers of them are turning to an electric instrument, rather than taking the traditional, and once the only, route of learning to play an acoustic first.

Development of Guitars

While the roots of acoustic guitars can be traced back as far as 1,000 BC, electric guitars are less than 100 years old.  Electric powered music boxes started to be developed in the 19^th century, but it wasn’t until the 1920s when Lloyd Loar, who was an engineer at the now legendary Gibson guitar company, first attached electric pickups to a viola and a string bass that people started to explore the possibility of an electric guitar.

Inventing the Electric Guitar

To this day, there is much dispute over who actually invented the electric guitar.  While there were many innovations happening around that time, guitar legend Les Paul was one of the first to experiment with attaching microphones to guitars, for example, George Beauchamp’s 1931 “Frying Pan” guitar is widely credited as the first commercial version of the instrument.

The first documented live performance with an electric guitar was in 1932, by an American musician named Gage Brewer, performed using Beauchamp’s instruments; Brewer is also thought to be responsible for the first track to be recorded featuring an electric guitar, although he never released any music himself.

Later Development

Development of electric guitars would continue throughout the 1930s, with Gibson’s first guitar being produced and sold in 1936, the ES-150 (standing for ‘Electric Spanish’ and the $150 cost of the instrument), which also came with an amplifier.  It would be fair to say the instrument wasn’t what we expect from Gibson today; the ES-150 suffered a lot of criticism owing to the unequal loudness the guitar strings produced!

Les Paul & Fender

Later in the decade, Les Paul continued to experiment with his guitars and eventually came up with a design known as ‘The Log.’  Many mistakenly believe that this was the basis for the Gibson Les Paul guitars that are sold to this day.  In fact, the Gibson Les Paul was designed later, launched in 1952, and was developed alongside Ted McCarty, a guitar pioneer who was President of Gibson for 16 years, and is widely credited as being the man to turn them into the company they are today, although there was a 20 year period of instability after he left in 1966.

This decade was also when Leo Fender introduced his first guitar to the market, in 1950.  In 1954, the famous Fender Stratocaster, still one of the most popular guitars in the world, was launched.

Electric Guitars Today

While electric guitars have continued to evolve and various engineers and musicians have pioneered a number of add-ons and innovations, the idea behind the instrument remains rooted in these early innovations.  Despite several legendary artists having their own ‘signature’ instruments launched by Gibson, Fender, and other instrument manufacturers, the credit and story behind them very much remains with the early pioneers.

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